02
Sat, Nov
2 New Articles

How to Implement Effective ITIL Change Management for Cloud

Cloud - Other
Typography
  • Smaller Small Medium Big Bigger
  • Default Helvetica Segoe Georgia Times

 

Business need to be able to effect rapid change without disrupting the services they offer to users and customers.

Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) change management refers to a set of guidelines and processes for managing changes in IT services. The guidelines allow businesses to make changes without affecting the customer’s experience. They not only reduce the chances of implementing changes without direction, but also allow IT professionals to prioritize changes according to the needs of the business. This is particularly important for companies running on cloud infrastructures because change happens all time.

It’s important to understand that ITIL isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to implementing change management. Most companies will modify the processes and policies to fit their frameworks and infrastructures. In this article, I’ll explain some of the ways in which you can implement effective ITIL change management for your cloud infrastructure today.

What Is the Goal of ITIL Change Management?

The primary goal of ITIL change management is to enable companies to change rapidly without disrupting the services they offer to users and customers. Companies often propose change based on strategic organizational goals, which means that there’s usually a formal process that has to be followed before a change can be approved.

By implementing ITIL, your company will be able to assess the benefits, risks, and impacts of all changes in the IT system. You’ll also be able to prioritize changes and allocate resources efficiently. And if your deployment fails, you’ll be able to turn to ITIL to ensure you can restore the state of your environment to a functional state.

Managing an Efficient ITIL Change Management Process

When implementing IT change management, there are different approaches you can follow to ensure the process goes as smoothly as possible:

Standard Changes

These changes depend on the procedures and policies already set by the company. Standard changes are used in situations where the risks of implementing a change are known. They are easy to apply and prioritize because they don't usually require risk-management approval.

Normal Changes

These types of changes require a detailed process before they are implemented and approved. If a change is considered very risky, then a change advisory board will need to decide whether it should be applied or not.

Emergency Changes

These refer to the changes that happen when an error or a security threat happens to the company’s infrastructure. These changes need to happen quickly and must be approved by the Emergency Change Advisory Board, or ECAB.  

Change Management Roles

Before implementing ITIL in your organizations, you need to consider creating the following roles in your organization:

Change Initiator

A change initiator is a person who identifies and suggests a change. This person is usually involved in working directly with users and customers and frequently interacts with support service tools.

Change Coordinator

The change coordinator is the person who suggests changes across the entire software development lifecycle. The role of this individual is to determine the risks and impacts of requested changes, develop implementation plans, and monitor the changes once implemented.

Change Manager

Many large organizations will need to assign a person or a group of individuals as a change manager. A change manager is responsible for keeping an extensive record of the result of each change, forming the ECAB during emergencies, and managing all the procedures related to implementing a new change.

Change Advisory Board

The change advisory board’s main responsibility is to evaluate changes that are marked as high risk by the change manager. Furthermore, they are also responsible for authorizing changes and helping the change manager in change scheduling and prioritization. The change advisory board will usually schedule meetings to determine how to move forward with high-risk changes.

Approver

The approver has the final say on what changes get approved or rejected.

Change Implementation Team

IT managers are often responsible for overseeing changes. However, they are also usually part of the change implementation team, which includes all the specialists responsible for making all the proposed changes.

ITIL Change Management Procedures

The change management process varies depending on the type of IT changes and risk levels. However, the general process for can be broken down into following steps:

Requesting Change Review

Change coordinators use this procedure as soon as they start dealing with requests for change.

Change Planning

During the change planning phase, change specialists and coordinators develop an in-depth implementation plan for all the changes.

Change Approval

The change manager and approvers then approve the proposed changes set by the change coordinators.

Change Implementation

Specialists implement the infrastructure changes after the approval of a change.

Change Closure

After successfully applying and testing changes, the change coordinators close out the changes and employ them into the infrastructure.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) You Should Track

Tracking the progress of your IT change management process is key to minimizing risk and increasing the performance of your infrastructure. Below is a list of KPIs you should always track:

Backlog of Changes

This refers to the number of changes that must be completed. The number varies according to the size of the organization and/or the project, but it shouldn’t increase over time.

Successful Changes

This is the ratio of successfully completed changes and the total number of completed changes. As a result, the higher the percentage, the better.

Emergency Changes

This refers to the number of emergency changes that were completed by a business. The number shouldn’t increase over time.

Requirements for Effective Change Management in the Cloud

When implementing ITIL change management in your cloud environment, it’s important that you consider the two factors below:

Infrastructure Delta

The biggest benefit of moving to the cloud is the ability to scale your infrastructure up and down based on your needs. This process is known as auto scaling. And although it’s very useful for launching resources based on specific metrics, it makes it hard to implement change management. After all, how do you track changes in your infrastructure if new resources keep appearing and disappearing? To get a clear picture of your changes on the cloud, you need an infrastructure, which gives you updates on your running resources for a particular time frame.

Define the Ideal Infrastructure

Once you’ve moved into the cloud, you’ll need to set the appearance of your ideal infrastructure. For instance, you could add tags for each of your resources and set up real-time alerts whenever someone launches a resource that violates your policy. It’s usually a good idea to add Terraform to each resource tag so you can see who launched the resource, the name of the resource, the policy it violates, and the environment the resources belong to.

Leveraging Change Management Tools

If you’re currently using a cloud service to manage your infrastructure, then you should automate the change management process as much as possible. With a tool like nOps, you can review all the newly introduced resources, whether they’re changes or documents, and accurately track the impact of each change. Other popular change management tools include Puppet, Chef, and Docker.

How do you currently manage change in your organization? Share your tools and strategies in the Comments below. 

BLOG COMMENTS POWERED BY DISQUS

LATEST COMMENTS

Support MC Press Online

$

Book Reviews

Resource Center

  • SB Profound WC 5536 Have you been wondering about Node.js? Our free Node.js Webinar Series takes you from total beginner to creating a fully-functional IBM i Node.js business application. You can find Part 1 here. In Part 2 of our free Node.js Webinar Series, Brian May teaches you the different tooling options available for writing code, debugging, and using Git for version control. Brian will briefly discuss the different tools available, and demonstrate his preferred setup for Node development on IBM i or any platform. Attend this webinar to learn:

  • SB Profound WP 5539More than ever, there is a demand for IT to deliver innovation. Your IBM i has been an essential part of your business operations for years. However, your organization may struggle to maintain the current system and implement new projects. The thousands of customers we've worked with and surveyed state that expectations regarding the digital footprint and vision of the company are not aligned with the current IT environment.

  • SB HelpSystems ROBOT Generic IBM announced the E1080 servers using the latest Power10 processor in September 2021. The most powerful processor from IBM to date, Power10 is designed to handle the demands of doing business in today’s high-tech atmosphere, including running cloud applications, supporting big data, and managing AI workloads. But what does Power10 mean for your data center? In this recorded webinar, IBMers Dan Sundt and Dylan Boday join IBM Power Champion Tom Huntington for a discussion on why Power10 technology is the right strategic investment if you run IBM i, AIX, or Linux. In this action-packed hour, Tom will share trends from the IBM i and AIX user communities while Dan and Dylan dive into the tech specs for key hardware, including:

  • Magic MarkTRY the one package that solves all your document design and printing challenges on all your platforms. Produce bar code labels, electronic forms, ad hoc reports, and RFID tags – without programming! MarkMagic is the only document design and print solution that combines report writing, WYSIWYG label and forms design, and conditional printing in one integrated product. Make sure your data survives when catastrophe hits. Request your trial now!  Request Now.

  • SB HelpSystems ROBOT GenericForms of ransomware has been around for over 30 years, and with more and more organizations suffering attacks each year, it continues to endure. What has made ransomware such a durable threat and what is the best way to combat it? In order to prevent ransomware, organizations must first understand how it works.

  • SB HelpSystems ROBOT GenericIT security is a top priority for businesses around the world, but most IBM i pros don’t know where to begin—and most cybersecurity experts don’t know IBM i. In this session, Robin Tatam explores the business impact of lax IBM i security, the top vulnerabilities putting IBM i at risk, and the steps you can take to protect your organization. If you’re looking to avoid unexpected downtime or corrupted data, you don’t want to miss this session.

  • SB HelpSystems ROBOT GenericCan you trust all of your users all of the time? A typical end user receives 16 malicious emails each month, but only 17 percent of these phishing campaigns are reported to IT. Once an attack is underway, most organizations won’t discover the breach until six months later. A staggering amount of damage can occur in that time. Despite these risks, 93 percent of organizations are leaving their IBM i systems vulnerable to cybercrime. In this on-demand webinar, IBM i security experts Robin Tatam and Sandi Moore will reveal:

  • FORTRA Disaster protection is vital to every business. Yet, it often consists of patched together procedures that are prone to error. From automatic backups to data encryption to media management, Robot automates the routine (yet often complex) tasks of iSeries backup and recovery, saving you time and money and making the process safer and more reliable. Automate your backups with the Robot Backup and Recovery Solution. Key features include:

  • FORTRAManaging messages on your IBM i can be more than a full-time job if you have to do it manually. Messages need a response and resources must be monitored—often over multiple systems and across platforms. How can you be sure you won’t miss important system events? Automate your message center with the Robot Message Management Solution. Key features include:

  • FORTRAThe thought of printing, distributing, and storing iSeries reports manually may reduce you to tears. Paper and labor costs associated with report generation can spiral out of control. Mountains of paper threaten to swamp your files. Robot automates report bursting, distribution, bundling, and archiving, and offers secure, selective online report viewing. Manage your reports with the Robot Report Management Solution. Key features include:

  • FORTRAFor over 30 years, Robot has been a leader in systems management for IBM i. With batch job creation and scheduling at its core, the Robot Job Scheduling Solution reduces the opportunity for human error and helps you maintain service levels, automating even the biggest, most complex runbooks. Manage your job schedule with the Robot Job Scheduling Solution. Key features include:

  • LANSA Business users want new applications now. Market and regulatory pressures require faster application updates and delivery into production. Your IBM i developers may be approaching retirement, and you see no sure way to fill their positions with experienced developers. In addition, you may be caught between maintaining your existing applications and the uncertainty of moving to something new.

  • LANSAWhen it comes to creating your business applications, there are hundreds of coding platforms and programming languages to choose from. These options range from very complex traditional programming languages to Low-Code platforms where sometimes no traditional coding experience is needed. Download our whitepaper, The Power of Writing Code in a Low-Code Solution, and:

  • LANSASupply Chain is becoming increasingly complex and unpredictable. From raw materials for manufacturing to food supply chains, the journey from source to production to delivery to consumers is marred with inefficiencies, manual processes, shortages, recalls, counterfeits, and scandals. In this webinar, we discuss how:

  • The MC Resource Centers bring you the widest selection of white papers, trial software, and on-demand webcasts for you to choose from. >> Review the list of White Papers, Trial Software or On-Demand Webcast at the MC Press Resource Center. >> Add the items to yru Cart and complet he checkout process and submit

  • Profound Logic Have you been wondering about Node.js? Our free Node.js Webinar Series takes you from total beginner to creating a fully-functional IBM i Node.js business application.

  • SB Profound WC 5536Join us for this hour-long webcast that will explore:

  • Fortra IT managers hoping to find new IBM i talent are discovering that the pool of experienced RPG programmers and operators or administrators with intimate knowledge of the operating system and the applications that run on it is small. This begs the question: How will you manage the platform that supports such a big part of your business? This guide offers strategies and software suggestions to help you plan IT staffing and resources and smooth the transition after your AS/400 talent retires. Read on to learn: